Friday, January 30, 2015

About seven miles north of Avocado, the Morris family shore
house located in Sea Girt, New Jersey, is the small town of Ocean Grove. Founded in 1869 by a group of devout
Methodists as a permanent camp meeting location, Ocean Grove became a seaside
community devoted to simple living and everyday holiness. It
does not seem as though Marriott C. Morris visited Ocean Grove frequently,
however his photographs of Ocean Pathway leading toward the Auditorium and the
camp meeting tents show evidence of at least one trip to the seaside town. Morris’ photos, along with other items from
the Library Company’s collection, give a picture of late 19th
century life in this unique place on the Jersey shore.

View of the
tents from Service by the Sea. Ninth
Annual Report of the President of the Ocean Grove Camp-Meeting Association of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1878

Morris chose to highlight one of the most distinctive aspects
of Ocean Grove in his photographs; its tents.
The tents originally provided temporary housing for the attendees of the
Methodist revivals but stayed a part of the community even as permanent
structures sprung up in Ocean Grove. In
the late 19th century, tents could be found throughout the town and
about 100 still remain. Tent life was
extremely popular in Ocean Grove, allowing residents easy access to religious services
and the opportunity to live simply. In
the Ninth Annual Report of the President of the Ocean Grove Camp-Meeting
Association of the Methodist Episcopal Church, President E.H. Stokes wrote that
“tent life at this place instead of losing, increases in interest every year.” Each
summer, both when Morris visited and today, tent owners pull sheets of canvas
from the shed at the rear of each tent and stretch it over a wooden platform,
creating their home for the next few months.

View of the
tents from Achievements by the Sea.
Twelfth Annual Report of the President of the Ocean Grove Camp-Meeting
Association of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1881

In addition to the camp meetings, its beautiful shoreline contributed
to Ocean Grove’s popularity as a summer destination. A stereograph by Gustavus Pach from the
Library Company’s collection shows a crowd enjoying Ocean Grove’s beach. Bathing attire in the 19th century
was significantly more modest than today’s, and this was even more important
than usual in a religious town like Ocean Grove where the “improper, immodest
and exposed condition” of bathers was discouraged outside of the bathing
grounds.

Gustavus Pach, Views of Ocean Grove, New Jersey, ca. 1877

Not every visitor to Ocean Grove stayed in a tent. Elegant hotels like The Arlington, seen in
this image from the 1878 Annual Report, provided more opulent
accommodation. Another stereograph by
Pach from about 1877 shows an aerial view of The Arlington with tents in the
background. Standing next to the hotel
is W.F. Day & Bros. Ice Cream Garden offering a cool respite from the
summer heat. Undoubtedly, the line
stretched around the block in the 1870s as it still does today at Day’s.

View of the
Arlington from Service by the Sea. Ninth
Annual Report of the President of the Ocean Grove Camp-Meeting Association of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1878

Gustavus Pach, Views of Ocean Grove, New Jersey, ca. 1877

Morris’ second photograph of Ocean Grove shows Ocean Pathway
leading toward the Auditorium, where the main worship services for the camp
meetings were held. The Auditorium’s
spire is visible beyond the trees, but the building that Morris photographed was
not the first Auditorium in Ocean Grove.
As attendance at the camp meeting grew each year, the need for a larger
building became more apparent. The
annual report from 1878 details renovations made to the existing auditorium,
which included the suggestion of extending the roof to accommodate more
seats. In the Annual Report from 1880,
the need for expansion was even more explicit and a new building was proposed
on the plot of land north of Ocean Pathway.
This is where the Auditorium was located when Morris visited in 1884,
serving as the center of the town, both visually and spiritually.

Friday, January 23, 2015

A wide variety of projects have resulted from readers using
our historical collections. Occasionally we like to feature them in our blog (http://librarycompany.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-view-of-past.html).
In late 2014 I had the pleasure to meet Ronald Shaffer, who among his many
activities serves as the president of the Old Pine Conservancy (http://oldpineconservancy.org/about-us.),
as well as a tour guide of the church’s graveyard. Mr. Shaffer has been a frequent visitor to our
main reading room immersing himself in Philadelphia’s past. One of the results
of his labor is the Old Pine Conservancy graveyard self-guided tour guide
reproduced below.

Suel-Gi Lee, a student at Moore College of Art and Design,
created this map as part of an internship project. To study the graveyard from different
perspectives, Ms. Lee walked among the headstones at ground level and spent
time on the roof deck of the adjacent Old Pine Community Center. Utilizing
digital photography and knowledge about drawing spatial relationships gained
from former art student Mr. Shaffer, Ms. Lee drew a map that depicts an overall
view of the cemetery, while also highlighting specific markers. Old Pine
Conservancy members chose the selected grave markers to emphasize the diversity
of the nearly 5, 000 people buried in the graveyard. Additional maps are being
planned by the Conservancy covering tour topics such as Yellow Fever, Sea
Captains-Privateers, and Affairs of the Heart.

A desire to learn more about who was interred in the
graveyard is what drew Mr. Shaffer to the Library Company. With the help of
Chief of Reference Connie King, he researched the 275 Revolutionary War veterans
buried at Old Pine. Using sources such as the multi-volume Pennsylvania Archives, Watson’s Annals
of Philadelphia, and Scharf & Westcott’s History of Philadelphia, Shaffer and other volunteers created brief
biographies for approximately half the Revolutionary War soldiers buried in the
graveyard. With thousands of more names from the graveyard to investigate, we
are sure to be seeing more of Mr. Shaffer in the months (and years!) to come.

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The Library Company of Philadelphia

The Library Company of Philadelphia is an independent research library specializing in American history and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Open to the public free of charge, the Library Company houses an extensive collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, prints, photographs, and works of art. Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, the Library Company is America's oldest cultural institution and served as the Library of Congress from the Revolutionary War to 1800. The Library Company was the largest public library in America until the Civil War.

The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials in our care. We serve a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and internationally, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, online catalogs, and regular exhibitions and public programs.